Every year in September, just as the leaves start turning entrancing shades of gold and red, we start watching scary movies in our house. It’s just what you do. Clean up after supper, gather some blankets, snacks and beverages, then browse through DirecTV, Netflix, Prime, and Hulu, and if all else fails, resort to our bluray collection to find a scary movie to watch.

We love the classics–Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream–but honestly, who hasn’t seen them a million freakin’ times, right?

I was practically born with a weakness for anthology horror. My mom raised me on scary stuff. There were nights on the couch, watching scary movies and munching popcorn with the lights off, and I always had a weakness for The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. As I got older, I discovered I liked anthology horror movies like The Twilight Zone Movie and Creepshow a lot, and in recent years, I’ve been lamenting the loss of the genre on screens both big and small, so when I saw this, I had to share it.

Right from the beginning, “The Root of the Problem” grabs you with a delightfully campy yet intense delivery. In this short film from 2012, Director Ryan Spindell ratchets up the tension from the opening moments and delivers an episode of mysterious dread in a 1950s dentist’s office. This tale would have been right at home as an episode of Tales from the Crypt or The Outer Limits. I watched this with earbuds and found the sound to be a real treat, too.

Exodus North is a short story, original fiction, the final draft of a story I wrote with the working title “Spring Cleaning” about the zombie apocalypse. It’s an idea that came to me sometime during the first season of Walking Dead. I found myself wondering what would happen in cold climates in the zombie apocalypse. This story–the tale of a group of survivors, refugees from the south, who found a remote outpost in the Canadian forest and made it their home–addresses a few of those questions. It’s a short read, only seven pages. Enjoy.

Today, for Short Film Friday, I’ve selected State Zero, a short post-apocalypse film by Andree Wallin. This low-budget indie film looks like a big-budget blockbuster. The description from the State Zero YouTube channel sets the stage as such: